Environmental Crisis to Governance Challenge: The Evolution of Social Science Research on Haze in Indonesia

This study maps the development of social science research on haze in Indonesia from 1997 to 2025, identifying its thematic structure and the evolution of research foci. Data were retrieved from Scopus and limited to English-language journal articles within the Social Sciences subject area, resulting in a final dataset of 151 articles. Bibliometric analysis examined publication trends and the contributions of countries, institutions, authors, and publication sources. Concurrently, science mapping was conducted using VOSviewer through co-authorship, co-occurrence, and overlay visualisation analyses based on average publication year. The results indicate that scholarly output increased significantly from the mid-2010s, peaking in 2021. Indonesia accounted for the majority of publications, with substantial contributions from national, regional, and international institutions. The thematic structure revealed five principal research areas: land-use change and forest fires, regional governance and environmental policy, health impacts and air pollution, community-based mitigation, and environmental monitoring and analysis. The temporal evolution of the literature demonstrates a shift from an initial focus on health impacts and pollution toward land and peatland governance, mitigation, community participation, legal issues, and transboundary cooperation. These findings suggest that haze research in Indonesia has evolved through the increasing integration of diverse and interconnected themes, positioning haze as a multilevel governance challenge rather than solely an environmental crisis.